Eighteen Days and a Dozen Bottles

So the feeding tube is officially gone!

The night nurse decided to just leave it out and the day nurse didn't put it back in either. Ezri is doing so well with nipple feeding that they're just keeping her on that and allowing her to eat as much as she wants when she wants. This makes a lot more sense than the strict eating schedule they had her on. She's a baby - they're supposed to eat when they want, not when a chart says they have to.

At any rate, with switching over completely to nipple feeding, we are now officially on the 48 hour countdown to going home. Starting at 1:00am on Wednesday, Ezri has been nippling all of her feeds, gaining weight and not having any "episodes" - heart rate dropping, stopping breathing etc. These are the conditions for her being discharged, so once she makes it through 48 hours like this, they will sign the order to get her out of there. So, Friday morning at 1:00am, she will hit the mark, which means they could discharge her anytime after that. We have our "To Do" list made up to get everything ready because we're anticipating that Friday night we will have a baby in the house.

With that said, we should probably address the issue of visitation. Not surprisingly, a lot of you have already asked about coming to see her - both at the hospital and when she gets home. We haven't been taking any visitors because...well just because we haven't felt like it and haven't wanted to overwhelm Ezri with a bunch of handling and passing around. When we come home with her, we would like some time with just the three of us - well and the animals too - to get acclimated to everything and let Ezri adjust to being home. Keep in mind that even though she's not in the NICU, she is still a preemie and easily overstimulated with sights, sounds, etc. Also keep in mind that she will be VERY prone to catching things, so we will be keeping her away from large crowds and other kids until we talk to her pediatrician. With cold and flu season coming up, we've been told to stay pretty isolated and let Ezri get stronger before exposing her to a bunch of stuff. She has already had quite a rough start to life and we don't want to make it worse by having her sick the next few months.

So to paraphrase - we won't be taking any visitors for a while once we're home. Once we decide to, we'll unfortuneately be pretty strict on how many people can come at a time and won't be having any other little ones around. This isn't meant to offend or put anyone out - it's coming from the doctors and nurses in the NICU. The number one priority right now is to keep Ezri healthy and out of the hospital. The next time we see her in a hospital bed, it better be right after she has her own kid.